


Clear As Day

by HopeCoppice



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Fluff and Crack, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Other, Sneaky Bastards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21616504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeCoppice/pseuds/HopeCoppice
Summary: The order in which Aziraphale keeps his books is designed to be confusing. But after the Apocalypse, Aziraphale is horrified to realise that Crowley knows where everything belongs.And that means he knows how Aziraphale's filing system actually works.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 62
Kudos: 573





	Clear As Day

**Author's Note:**

> This is ridiculous but it made me smile. Enjoy!

After the Ritz, they went back to the bookshop. There was no reason not to, now, no reason not to spend time in one another’s company. Aziraphale looked around himself contentedly, glad to see that his home and his books were not, in fact, ashes.

“Hm. He’s put them back alphabetically,” Crowley mused, running his finger along the edge of a shelf. “Do you want a hand putting them right?”

“Oh, I’ll do it- it’s a very complicated system-” But Crowley was already wandering the shelves, picking out books to shelve together, and Aziraphale saw his own folly writ large in the demon’s movements as he sauntered without hesitation to the books whose authors began with _C,_ picked one out, and moved onto the _R_ section. Then _O._ Then _W_ …

“Oh good Lord.” Aziraphale sank into the nearest chair, cheeks burning. “How long have you known?”

_Crowley had asked him for Holy Water, and he’d reacted impeccably, of course. It was completely reasonable, when a friend asked for help protecting himself from literal Hell, to worry that he might harm himself and therefore to deny having any sort of affection for him at all. Oh, blast. He’d behaved abominably._

_Aziraphale’s instinct was to rush back to the park and try to take it all back, but there was no point - Crowley was angry, and defensive, and an angry, defensive Crowley wouldn’t be particularly understanding of Aziraphale’s fears. Crowley had spent so much of history alone, he’d probably laugh if Aziraphale told him he was afraid to face a future without him. Besides, an apology would do little good if he still couldn’t give Crowley what he wanted - and he couldn’t. Holy Water; it was a demon’s death sentence, and a sudden, horrific one at that. Aziraphale had seen it happen, once - long ago, far away from Crowley’s solitary skulking. Sandalphon had been gleeful as he’d dispatched the demon - the unfortunate creature had simply scuttled past them as Aziraphale was making a report - but Aziraphale had felt sick. Already, all those years ago, he had known it wasn’t a fate he wanted for Crowley, and until now it hadn’t seemed very likely. Aziraphale didn’t think Crowley had ever seen a demon destroyed by Holy Water, and he hoped he never would. He certainly wasn’t going to help him do it to himself, however much Crowley insisted he had no intention of using it that way. Accidents happened. Dark moments happened. Aziraphale wouldn’t risk it. He couldn’t._

_He returned to his shop and glared around himself at the books. They were organised, currently, ‘alphabetically by the first word on the fourteenth page’, which presented as completely random to the uninitiated. It had also turned out to be surprisingly bothersome for Aziraphale. He snapped his fingers, and the books piled themselves obediently on the floor. He took a moment to think up a new system, and then he took a drink, and by the time he actually stood up to sort them out, he was mostly thinking about Crowley. The following morning, the pattern was all too clear to see - at least, to the mortified angel who’d put it there. But then… it was sort of like a code, wasn’t it? Crowley was fond of codes, and he’d once told Aziraphale that breaking a code was much harder if you didn’t have a keyword. Well, Aziraphale knew what he’d done, but nobody else would see it. Customers would be utterly baffled, and that was the point, really, wasn’t it? Making his precious books harder to find._

_Nobody would notice. It would be fine._

“How long have you known, Crowley?” He spoke louder this time, so the demon couldn’t pretend not to hear him again.

“I spotted my name over there-” He gestured towards the top shelf, nearest the door, where a whole row of _A_ s currently stood in a proud rank. “-1948. Thought it was a coincidence. Then I thought… might be something magic, you know, maybe that was what made the doors open for me too. Spotted another one over there.” He shrugged. “Then… must have been 1960 by the time I realised there were more words dotted around the shop. And- and then I went back and looked. At my name.”

“And…?”

“1963. Remember when that church caught on Hellfire and you had to go and put it out?”

“That wasn’t you.” It had better not have been.

“No, that was Hastur. He gets bored. But I, er, may have taken advantage of you being out, so I could read it all. It took _hours._ ”

“And?”

“And I read it,” Crowley said simply. “And that’s why it didn’t hurt as much as it might have, when you gave me the Holy Water, and you said I went too fast-”

“Well, you do,” Aziraphale told him, “the way you drive that car-”

“It didn’t hurt so much, knowing this was here. Especially when it was still here, all those years later.”

Aziraphale sighed.

“Well, you’re certainly not going too fast _now._ ” He waved a hand, and Crowley had to duck as the books began rearranging themselves into their former order. The _Just William_ books stayed where they were, but the rest…

_Coleridge. Roscoe. Ogborne. Wilde. Lovelace. Eden. d’Yves. Monmouth. Yeldham. Drake. Engelbretsdatter. Austen. Rákóczi…_

_Crowley, my dear,_ the message read, all too clearly now that they were both standing there together. _I have never been without you, not in all these years, all these centuries. I wish I could help you, but I cannot bear to think of you in pain. I cannot bear to think of you gone. I am not afraid of falling, Crowley, I am not afraid of disappointing Her. I am afraid of losing you, and I am afraid that one day I will push you away and you will not come back. I need you to come back, Crowley. But even if I never see you again, that will be better than if you were destroyed. I have loved you for too long to let you go now. Yours, always yours, Aziraphale._

“...Astell, Lawrence, Egerton. Yeah, they’re all back in-”

“You _knew_.” Aziraphale interrupted Crowley’s mumbling. “You’ve known for _years_. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Told myself it was a coincidence.” Crowley shrugged, face turned down towards the floor. “Seeing things that weren’t there. Took me ages to work out why you’d put two Hs together for the capital in Her, that muddied the waters a bit. And what was I supposed to say, anyway, _hey angel, I just realised your whole shop is a love letter to me-”_

“It is.” Aziraphale reached out to touch Crowley’s elbow, just for that tiny, innocent point of contact between them both. “It _is_. I love you, Crowley-”

“I’m a demon.” Crowley pointed out darkly, “I can’t be what you need-”

“You _are_ what I need. You always have been. Please, Crowley, I thought-” He’d thought Crowley loved him, too. “That is, er, ah. I fear I’ve made a fool of myself.”

“Well, yeah. This…” The demon gestured around himself at the familiar shelves, still spelling out their secret message for all the world to see, if only they looked. “This is ridiculous, and dangerous, and I l-” He cleared his throat abruptly, sweeping his sunglasses from his nose in a single impatient movement. “I love it. I love _you._ ”

For a moment, the world seemed to stop, the demon struggling for breath as if he’d just been punched in the stomach. The words seemed to have taken all of the air out of his lungs, and Aziraphale felt much the same way. How many years had he wasted on dreaming of hearing those very syllables, and now here they were, still echoing faintly in the ether.

“I love you,” Crowley repeated, sounding utterly stunned. “I said it.”

“You said it,” Aziraphale agreed, “and I said it, and the world didn’t end.”

“Wonder what else we can get away with.” Crowley’s smile was as anxious as it was sly, and it didn’t take long for his nerve to fail him. “Er- too fast?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Aziraphale assured him, “I think it’s time I put my foot down.”


End file.
